Building Stronger Geoscience Departments Traveling Workshop Program

The Traveling Workshop Program has become a part of the NAGT Traveling Workshops Program. To apply to host one of these workshops, go to the NAGT website and complete the application process.

From 2009-2013, the Traveling Workshop Program visited 22 departments (ranging from two-year colleges to four year colleges to comprehensive universities to research intensive PhD institutions), meeting with 241 faculty members. Workshop participants reported an overall satisfaction rate of 8.95 out of 10.

This traveling workshop program brought the knowledge gained from the Building Strong Geoscience Departments project onto campuses to support conversation and planning by departments as a whole. In collaboration with the National Association of Geoscience Teachers (NAGT), the program offered a menu of interactive sessions distilling the lessons learned from our previous workshops and fully supported with on-line resources. All sessions featured presentations, discussions, and action planning.

It was recommended that the workshop be used in conjunction with a retreat or other departmental planning event. Departments applied for a workshop, identifying the length of event they were interested in and the topics that were of highest interest to them.The departments then provided information about the department and its programs. Workshop leaders were selected from those available to develop a workshop program from the high interest topics and come to campus to lead the workshop.

The traveling workshop program offered several unique opportunities:

It focuses on the specific context of your department.

It engages the entire department, rather than one or two individuals, in an in-depth, structured discussion about the topics of choice.

It provides an external framework and support for a department that is committed to making changes.

The two-person team approach provides two outside perspectives.

This program took advantage of the well-established concept of having distinguished speakers visit a department to disseminate research results. However, in this case the traveling workshop leaders disseminated the composite results of the Building Strong Geoscience Departments workshops.

Traveling Workshop Leaders, 2009-2013

Tim Bralower, The Pennsylvania State University
Diane Clemens-Knott, California State University-Fullerton
Diane Doser, University of Texas-El Paso
Geoff Feiss, College of William and Mary
Dallas Rhodes, Georgia Southern University
Randy Richardson, University of Arizona
Mary Savina, Carleton College